SoylentNews

upstart writes:

The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movie and video game rights are being sold off, report says:

The rights to make movies and video games based on JRR Tolkein's The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit are about to go up for sale, according to a report Wednesday. The Saul Zaentz Company is selling off the Tolkien rights it acquired back in 1976 for a predicted $2 billion, Variety said.

The rights also include TV shows with more than 8 episodes, live events, merchandise and theme parks, and some rights across additional Tolkien texts The Silmarillion and The Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-Earth, according to Variety.

The Saul Zaentz Company's Middle-earth Enterprises didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Amazon could be considering purchasing the rights, Variety said, after it paid a reported $250 million for the rights to make its upcoming TV series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Amazon reportedly bought those rights directly from the Tolkien estate, however, due to the eight-episode loophole.

Original Submission

Our servers are back up!

Earlier today (about 12 hours before this story), our site had a server crash. Early attempts to restart things (bouncing fluorine and hydrogen) were unsuccessful. (Thanks chromas and janrinok for your efforts!)

Fortunately, the system is usually lightly-loaded at this time, so relatively few people were affected.

Then mechanicjay came on the scene and was able to restart helium and neon. Then the rest of the servers for the site successfully came on-line.

Through it all, we retained access to IRC (thanks Deucalion!) and e-mail (thanks audioguy!).

There may be some lingering hiccups as slashd (which handles scheduled tasks -- think cron) plods through those tasks in due time.

We thank you for your patience during this time and send our thanks to all who notified us (politely!) about the outage on IRC and through e-mails.

Please join me in thanking all those who lent a hand through this period! You ROCK! =)

We return you to your regularly-scheduled stories.
--martyb

owl writes:

https://www.righto.com/2022/02/a-look-inside-chips-that-powered.html

The revolutionary Polaroid SX-701 camera (1972) was a marvel of engineering: the world's first instant SLR camera. This iconic camera was the brainchild of Dr. Edwin Land, a genius who co-founded Polaroid, invented polarized sunglasses, helped design the optics for the U-2 spy plane, and created a theory of color vision. The camera used self-developing film with square photos that came into view over a few minutes. The film was a complex sandwich of 11 layers of chemicals to develop a negative image and then form the visible color image. But the film was just one of the camera's innovations.

The camera required complex new optics to support the intricate light path shown below. The components included a flat Fresnel mirror, aspherical lenses, and a moving mirror. These optics could focus from infinity down to a closeup of 10 inches. The optics are even more amazing when you consider that the camera folded flat, 3 cm [~ 1.2 inches] thick and able to fit in a jacket pocket.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

European cloud companies want more protection from the EU:

Being a cloud company in 2022 is hard and the task is even harder when you're a European cloud company. All three of the top cloud services – AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud – are American, while the rest are mostly Chinese.

However European cloud companies do have a friend: the European Union. Or so a group of them hope, after writing an open letter, signed by 41 companies, asking for help combating "monopoly software providers" who are "once again using their dominant position to lock in customers, forcing them to use the cloud infrastructure they provide."

The letter is addressed to the EU's Margrethe Vestager, one of the most pro-EU politicians and – helpfully – someone with a track record for being tough on American companies, especially internet and technology firms.

"We have a fast-closing window of opportunity to preserve an autonomous European cloud infrastructure sector," the companies write. "The Digital Markets Act (DMA) could quickly ensure that the European cloud market is free, open and competitive. Unfortunately, the current version of the DMA requires clarification to ensure that its remedies also apply to unfair software practices by gatekeepers with dominant positions in productivity and enterprise software."

[...] The companies might be in luck, too, as the forthcoming DMA specifies that "cloud computing services" would be included under the definition of "core platform service", the framework by which the EU describes which companies fall under the scope of the legislation.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Replacing Huawei gear across the US could be much higher than expected:

The US government's bill for removing and replacing telecom equipment made by Chinese vendors could be billions more than previously thought.

Chinese vendors have largely been excluded from the US market due to ongoing concerns about security, with major carriers opting to use radio equipment from Ericsson, Nokia, and others.

However, several smaller providers still use kit from the likes of Huawei and ZTE because it is relatively inexpensive. The Rural Wireless Association, which represents operators with fewer than 100,000 customers, estimates a quarter of its members have Chinese-made kit in their networks.

[...] Separately, Huawei is also banned from dealing with US suppliers without a licence, severely limiting its access to key technologies such as chips and the Android operating system. Recently, there were moves to make the licence system even more restrictive.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Toshiba: 26TB HDDs Due Within a Year, 40TB HDDs in Five Years:

Toshiba this week outlined its aggressive hard disk drive road-map for the next five years via a Business Wire press release. The company expects to rapidly increase the capacity of its HDDs for nearline applications by adopting next-generation recording technologies as well as increasing the number of platters per drive. The company's nearest plan is to introduce a 26TB hard drive by the end of fiscal 2022, which means in 14 months from now. Meanwhile, a 40+ TB HDD is expected by 2027.

[...] Toshiba's next step will be announcement of a 20TB HDD that will continue to rely on FC-MAMR disks, but will employ 10 of them to increase capacity. Development of a 20TB hard drive is a relatively straightforward move that will enable it to compete against 20TB HDDs from Seagate and Western Digital that have been shipping for several months now.

[...] By the end of fiscal year 2022 that ends on March 31, 2023 (within the next 14 months), Toshiba will introduce its 10-platter 26TB HDD that will switch to microwave assisted switching MAMR (MAS-MAMR) technology enabled by platters developed by Showa Denko K.K. and heads designed by TDK. The company will maintain aggressive onward pace and intends to reveal an 11-platter 30TB drive in the following years (by the end of fiscal 2024, which ends on March 31, 2025).

upstart writes:

Tech bug keeps Mazda radios locked in to NPR:

Owners of 2014-17 Mazdas, in the Puget Sound area, contacted KUOW to report their infotainment systems were permanently locked in to the network.

Missing file extensions in album images sent with its digital-radio broadcast reportedly triggered the glitch.

The fix, according to Mazda, requires the replacement of a component.

[...] "We know lots of you always keep your car radio tuned to KUOW - but now some drivers don't have a choice," KUOW told listeners.

Scott Smith, in Seattle, told the network his on-screen menu would not stop cycling through options.

"I tried rebooting it because I've done that in the past - and nothing happened," he said.

"I realised I could hear NPR - but I can't change the station, can't use the navigation, can't use the Bluetooth."

KUOW said local Mazda dealerships had been "flooded with calls".

[...] "Mazda North American Operations (MNAO) has distributed service alerts advising dealers of the issue."

The fix requires the replacement of the $1,500 connectivity master unit, reports say.

But Mazda said customers could apply for a free "goodwill" replacement.

Original Submission

coolgopher writes:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/09/nuclear-fusion-heat-record-a-huge-step-in-quest-for-new-energy-source

The prospect of harnessing the power of the stars has moved a step closer to reality after scientists set a new record for the amount of energy released in a sustained fusion reaction.

Researchers at the Joint European Torus (JET), a fusion experiment in Oxfordshire, generated 59 megajoules of heat – equivalent to about 14kg of TNT – during a five-second burst of fusion, more than doubling the previous record of 21.7 megajoules set in 1997 by the same facility.

The feat announced on Wednesday follows more than two decades of tests and refinements at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy and has been hailed as a "major milestone" on the road to fusion becoming a viable and sustainable low-carbon energy source.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Factory contamination affects "at least" 7 billion gigabytes of flash memory:

Solid-state storage devices have so far been spared from the scarcity and high prices that the chip shortage has wrought upon graphics cards, cars, Raspberry Pi boards, and innumerable other products. But that may change soon, due in part to a "contamination" at two Japanese factories used by Western Digital and Kioxia to make flash memory.

According to a short Western Digital press release, the contamination issue has affected "at least" 6.5 exabytes of flash memory, which works out to a bit under 7 million terabytes or 7 billion gigabytes—that's a lot of NAND that will suddenly be unavailable for SSDs, phones, memory cards, and USB drives. An analyst speaking to Bloomberg suggested that the final total of the lost capacity could be as much as 16 exabytes.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Early Humans Placed the Hearth at the Optimal Location in Their Cave 170,000 Years Ago:

A groundbreaking study in prehistoric archaeology at Tel Aviv University provides evidence for high cognitive abilities in early humans who lived 170,000 years ago. In a first-of-its kind study, the researchers developed a software-based smoke dispersal simulation model and applied it to a known prehistoric site. They discovered that the early humans who occupied the cave had placed their hearth at the optimal location – enabling maximum utilization of the fire for their activities and needs while exposing them to a minimal amount of smoke.

[...] Yafit Kedar: "One focal issue in the debate is the location of hearths in caves occupied by early humans for long periods of time. Multilayered hearths have been found in many caves, indicating that fires had been lit at the same spot over many years. In previous studies, using a software-based model of air circulation in caves, along with a simulator of smoke dispersal in a closed space, we found that the optimal location for minimal smoke exposure in the winter was at the back of the cave. The least favorable location was the cave's entrance."

takyon writes:

Earth-like planet spotted orbiting Sun's closest star

Astronomers have discovered a third planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the star closest to the Sun. Dubbed Proxima Centauri d, the newly spotted world is probably a bit smaller than Earth, and well within the habitable zone of its host star — meaning that it could have oceans of liquid water that can potentially harbour life.

"It's showing that the nearest star probably has a very rich planetary system," says Guillem Anglada-Escudé, an astronomer at the Institute for Space Sciences in Barcelona, Spain, who led the team that in 2016 discovered the first planet to be seen orbiting Proxima Centauri.

Astronomer João Faria and his collaborators detected Proxima Centauri d by measuring tiny shifts in the spectrum of the star's light as the planet's gravity pulled it during orbit. The team used a state-of-the art spectrograph called ESPRESSO at the Very Large Telescope, a system of four 8.2-metre telescopes at the European Southern Observatory in Cerro Paranal, Chile. The results were published on 10 February in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

A candidate short-period sub-Earth orbiting Proxima Centauri

We detect a signal at 5.12 ± 0.04 days with a semi-amplitude of 39 ± 7 cm s⁻¹. The analysis of subsets of the ESPRESSO data, the activity indicators, and chromatic RVs suggest that this signal is not caused by stellar variability but instead by a planetary companion with a minimum mass of 0.26 ± 0.05 M_⊕ (about twice the mass of Mars) orbiting at 0.029 au from the star. The orbital eccentricity is well constrained and compatible with a circular orbit.

Previously: "Earth-Like" Exoplanet Found in Habitable Zone of Proxima Centauri
ESO Confirms Reports of Proxima Centauri Exoplanet
Dust Belts and Possible Additional Exoplanet Spotted Around Proxima Centauri
Icy second planet potentially spotted orbiting Proxima Centauri
Proxima Centauri b Confirmed Using VLT's ESPRESSO, Possible Third Exoplanet Found in System

Original Submission

upstart writes:

'Astronomically' high demand leads to surging Super Bowl ticket prices:

A perfect storm of factors is fueling sky high prices for Super Bowl tickets as fans clamor to be a part of Sunday's championship game in Los Angeles.

The Super Bowl is always a hot ticket, but with the Rams playing in their home stadium, die-hard Bengals fans flying in from Cincinnati, and no attendance restrictions for the first time in two years, demand is skyrocketing.

"A lot of factors are making this particular game incredibly unique," Akshay Khanna, general manager of North America for ticket retailer StubHub, told Reuters.

"But look, at the end of the day, that is just a reflection of supply and demand. There are only so many seats that are available for the Super Bowl. And the demand for a game like this is so astronomically high," Khanna added.

The "get in" price for a ticket on StubHub dipped just below $4,000 on Wednesday while the average price of tickets sold on the site was around $6,500, eye-watering amounts that left some fans with sticker shock.

[...] California buyers are driving the bulk of the sales, with residents accounting for over 50% of new ticket sales on Tuesday.

Although the Rams hope that means they will see plenty of blue and gold at SoFi Stadium on Sunday, quarterback Matthew Stafford wasn't so sure.

"I hope our fans are out there going crazy, but the Super Bowl is its own beast in terms of ticket sales," he said during a news conference. "I've seen some of those prices online and they're up there. I understand it is a lot of corporate people buying those and being able to come to the game, but hopefully we have a lot of LA Rams fans cheering for us."

takyon writes:

Restaurants scramble to serve enough chicken wings ahead of Super Bowl Sunday

upstart writes:

Female-led data hackathon runs for second year:

For the second year in a row, TrueCue has announced the winners of its women-only hackathon, which encouraged teams to use data find solutions for the topic of sustainability.

Partnering with Alteryx and the Institute of Directors, the Women + Data hackathon saw 250 women use global real-world datasets focusing on sustainable development goals to analyse a sustainability problem of their choice.

Zsanett Bahor, who was on one of the winning teams of the previous year's hackathon and is now a consulting analyst at TrueCue, said: "This year, we decided to look at sustainability because climate change and sustainability is one of the biggest challenges we face today.

"We wanted to continue on this idea of having a data set on a real-life global issue that affects everybody because then it's not specific to certain areas. It's genuinely of everyone's interest and data can be really powerful in solving these big, real-world issues."

Despite ongoing efforts to increase the number of women in the technology sector, recent research from BCS found that women only make up around 17% of IT specialists in the UK, a number that has barely moved over the past five years.

upstart writes:

Cost to rebuild US semiconductor manufacturing will keep growing:

As Washington debates spending $52 billion to start regaining America's former role as a leading semiconductor manufacturer, experts say the public and private cost over the next two decades may exceed 10 times that much—and some worry such spending may still not achieve the goal.

On Friday, the House passed the measure to appropriate the $52 billion in subsidies over five years, largely for grants to catalyze private companies' construction on U.S. soil of semiconductor fabrication factories, which are known as fabs. The Senate passed a similar bill last year. With President Joe Biden supporting the measure, some version of it may soon become law.

Some conservatives take issue with elements of the bill's semiconductor section and with other parts of the nearly 3,000-page House version. And others reject the very notion of such massive aid to private industry. But most members of Congress believe the spending is needed to ensure that the United States is not overly reliant on vulnerable overseas supplies of components that are nearly as critical as energy to both the global economy and U.S. national security.

The debate occurs amid a semiconductor shortage that is driving up inflation. It also comes as worries grow that Taiwan, where 92 percent of the world's high-end chips are made, could be invaded by China or that even a lesser crisis in that region could hamstring supplies that everyone from the Pentagon to General Motors relies upon.

But the long-term financial commitment that experts say would need to follow the $52 billion appropriation is rarely discussed.

[2022-02-11 00:49:35 UTC: UPDATE]
Video will be available on YouTube.

upstart writes:

Elon Musk to provide first update on SpaceX Starship since 2019:

SpaceX founder and reigning richest earthling Elon Musk is set to give humanity an update on his moon and Mars rocket, Starship, live from Texas this Thursday.

Starship is the next-generation spacecraft that NASA plans to use for its Artemis missions to the moon and that Musk hopes will land the first people on the red planet. He said on Twitter last week that he will present an update on the vehicle's development this Thursday, Feb. 10, at  6 p.m. PT (8 p.m. CT) from the company's Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas.

This will be the first such update we've seen from Musk on Starship in almost two and a half years. In that time, SpaceX launched and crash-landed a handful of prototypes before completing a high-altitude flight and touchdown (without then blowing up) last May.

[...] Next, the company plans to send Starship on its first orbital flight as soon as the Federal Aviation Administration completes a lengthy environmental review and issues a launch license. The FAA expects the review to be done by the end of this month, but the deadline has been pushed back once already.

Starship Update on YouTube (live at around 8:00 PM CDT, 9:00 PM EDT, 02:00 UTC).

Original Submission